If you're thinking about building a wireless network for your home or office, it pays to do a little planning to ensuree you implement it as securely as possible. Remember how you listened to your next-door neighbor's conversation with her mother-in-law about what happened at last year's 4th of July party on your baby monitor? Like all radio frequencies, anyone with a receiver can tune into a wireless channel, so you need to take extra precautions to prevent to your big-eared neighbor and cybercriminals from listening in.

The primary reason for building a wireless LAN (WLAN) is for increased mobility -- so you can move around from room to room without being tethered to a network jack. Another reason people like wireless LANs is because they can network their computers together without having to snake wires through their walls. Since you don't have to deal with the wires, in some regards building a wireless LAN is actually easier than you might think.

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